Flexible Policies Work – If You Do It Right

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Although American and British families can take some comfort in the recent reforms to flexible policies at work there seems to be a familiar rumble coming from business on both sides of the Atlantic.

Over the last week business groups have written to Yvette Cooper, the UK’s work and pensions secretary, warning against further legislation to force companies to accept flexible working requests.

The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) and British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) are concerned that a white paper, expected to be published this week, will outline more flexible working rules that would further burden companies, especially small ones.

Burden? What burden?

In January, the accounting giant KPMG, looking for a way to save payroll costs without losing valued employees, introduced an initiative called Flexible Futures. This new programme offered the 11,000 professionals in KPMG’s British operations the following options: They could go to a four-day workweek and take a 20 percent pay cut; they could opt for a mini-sabbatical at 30 percent base pay; they could opt for both of the above; or they could stick with their current arrangement.

The programme was hugely successful. Over 80 percent of KPMG’s professional employees (men and women) volunteered to take one of the flexible options. This allowed KPMG to achieve its goal of retaining jobs while cutting costs.

Because Flexible Futures positioned shorter workweeks and mini-sabbaticals as a strategic response to the downturn rather than a “benefit” for working mothers, it has gone some distance to legitimising flex time. Taking this option has become an honored choice — a way to save jobs. As a result, overloaded men as well as overloaded women have felt free to vary their schedules.

It’s all about the method of application. I’ve written before about fathers’ fear of asking for flexible hours because of the perceived worry it will be detrimental to their careers. But in these cash-poor days business needs to find a way to cut costs without cutting jobs and flexible policies work – they just need to pitch it right.

More Resources Showing Flexible Policies Work…

Simple policy tweak improves workers’ health, productivity …

Implementing flexible policies can add years to your employees’ lives, according to a three-year nationwide study released by the Work, Family and Health Network. The following findings for the study were compiled by eight …

S&C Chair Credits Flexible Policies for Women-Dominated …

Rodgin Cohen told the New York Law Journal that the high-percentage of women is due to policies such as flex-time and maternity leave that are designed to retain more women lawyers. “I think hopefully as we have more and more women …

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Working mothers detrimental to childrens health

Here we go again. A UK survey of more than 12,500 five-year-olds found those with working mothers less active and more likely to eat unhealthy food.

They found that five-year-olds whose mothers worked part-time or full-time were more likely to primarily consume sweetened drinks between meals.

They used their computers or watched television for at least two hours a day compared to the children of “stay at home” mothers who spent less than two hours on these activities.

They were also more likely to be driven to school compared to the children of “stay at home” mothers who tended to walk or cycle.

The children whose mothers had a flexible working pattern did have healthier lifestyles but when other factors were taken into account the researchers said there was little evidence that these children behaved more healthily.

RANT: Once again the mother’s of the world have had a bucketful of guilt and worry thrown over them from the establishment for wanting to work for a living and provide an income. We all know that everything would be great if all parents could work from home but some jobs just have to be done at the place of work – it’s a fact of life. What this report – from the Institute of Child Health – doesn’t say is what we can do about it.

For years the government’s of the westernized world have been actively encouraging mothers into work and act surprised when our children all start getting fat and acting like feral dogs. I’m all for parents working, everyone should work, it’s good for the soul and the purse. But it’s the type of work that’s as important as the act of working itself. When policy was put in place to get these parents into work it was focused on the same old methodology of up at 7am, in traffic at 8am, working at 9am. There was no brainstorming going on in those government offices, no “is there a way we can have it all” questions.

If someone had actually made some effort and given it some thought then maybe they would have come up with some enlightened policy for parents returning to work – for the nation as a whole. In S.Korea right now there is a broadband network that can deliver 1000Mbps – a 1000!!! My supplier says ‘up to 10Mbps’ and that’s a bloody lie. Can you imagine what could be done from any location with infastructure like that – any doc, video, software, net-meeting, examination, surgery, interview or architects drawing could be seen, worked on and consulted on in real-time. You’d never have to leave the house.

What if, instead of spending $Bn on turning a 6 lane motorway into a 10 lane motorway each new parent was given a free laptop, an internet connection like the one above and access to a service like hiremyparents. What if, instead of building and extending airports around the world for millions of business travellers to use you gave them an internet infastructure that would negate the need to travel, travelling would just be a waste of time and a needless destruction of a planet that’s already had enough of us.

If governments around the world could just get out of this tunnel-vision approach and see the possibilities that a new generation of technology and inspired thinking could bring about they would save $Tn (actually using the word trillions – mind-boggling), give parents the opportunity to turn their children’s TV’s off and take them for a walk and massively decrease the strain on our global travel network and the planet itself.

It’s a big job – I know that. It would be a massive upheaval for the world of work but look at the benefits, look at the alternative if we don’t do something. It would be like Bladerunner but with really fat kids.